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Re: ToC and/or bookmarks in PDF

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 12:18 AM, Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Thanks so much for getting back to me on this.
>
> Over 1,000 pages? Those are HUGE manuals!
> **Yes!
>
> I imagine that manually creating TOCs with links would be a huge amount
of work.
> **about 2 days every time the manual is updated
>
> If you don't mind my asking, what type of products are the manuals
documenting, that they are so big?
> **Complex telecom equipment
>
> Would it be possible to break the content up into separate docs that
would both make it easier for users to navigate through the content and
allow you to generate TOCs?
> **Possible - yes, effective - doubtful.

> Users will never be sure in which manual to look for a piece of
information, they will need to open and search more than one.

Erika,

Having managed a doc set for a single large product before, with over 100
separate guides totaling into the thousands of pages, I used to provide
something that you might wish to consider: An Adobe "Catalog" Index of your
completed PDF manual. It takes only a few minutes to generate, so is easy.
One then opens the .pdx file and enters a search string in the search box.
The results will show you the hits in context, so that you can see if it is
really the instance that you want to see, then click and you are brought to
that page. It is a really fantastic tool for the user of large doc sets
that is easy to provide.

Bob

Create an index for a collection (Acrobat Pro)

When you build a new index, Acrobat creates a file with the .pdx extension
and a new support folder, which contains one or more files with .idx
extensions. The IDX files contain the index entries. All of these files
must be available to users who want to search the index.

1.

Choose Tools > Index.

The Index toolset is displayed in the secondary toolbar.
2.

In the secondary toolbar, click Full Text Index With Catalog.

The Catalog dialog box is displayed.
3.

In the Catalog dialog box, click New Index.

The New Index Definition dialog box is displayed.
[image: New Index Definitions in Acrobat]
The New Index Definition dialog box.

4.

In Index Title, type a name for the index file.
5.

In Index Description, type a few words about the type of index or its
purpose.
6.

Click Options, select any advanced options you want to apply to your
index, and click OK.
[image: The Options Dialog Box in Acrobat]
In the Options dialog box, you can specify the advanced options for the
new index.

7.

Under Include These Directories, click Add, select a folder containing
some or all of the PDF files to be indexed, and click OK. To add more
folders, repeat this step.

Note:

Any folder nested under an included folder will also be included in the
indexing process. You can add folders from multiple servers or disk drives,
as long as you do not plan to move the index or any items in the document
collection.

8.

Under Exclude These Subdirectories, click Add, and select any nested
folder that contains PDF files you do not want to be indexed. Click OK and
repeat, as needed.
9.

Review your selections. To edit the list of folders to be included or
excluded, select the folder you want to change and click Remove.
10.

Click Build, and then specify the location for the index file. Click Save,
and then:
-

Click Close when the indexing finishes.
-

Click Stop to cancel the indexing process.

Note:

If you stop the indexing process, you cannot resume the same indexing
session but you donât have to redo the work. The options and folder
selections remain intact. You can click Open Index select the partially
finished index, and revise it.

Note:

If long path names are truncated in the Include These Directories and
Exclude These Subdirectories options, hold the pointer over each ellipsis
(...) until a tool tip appears, displaying the complete path of the
included or excluded folder.

Indexing Options dialog box

Do Not Include Numbers

Select this option to exclude all numbers that appear in the document text
from the index. Excluding numbers can significantly reduce the size of an
index, making searches faster.

Add IDs To Adobe PDF v1.0 Files

Select this option if your collection includes PDFs created before Acrobat
2.0, which did not automatically add identification numbers. ID numbers are
needed when long Mac OS filenames are shortened as they are translated into
MS-DOS filenames. Acrobat 2.0 and later versions automatically add
identifiers.

Do Not Warn For Changed Documents When Searching

When this option is not selected, a message appears when you search
documents that have changed since the most recent index build.

Custom Properties

Use this option to include custom document properties in the index; only
custom document properties that already exist in the PDFs you index are
indexed. Type the property, make a selection from the Type menu, and then
click Add. These properties appear as a search option in the Search
PDF window's
additional criteria pop-up menus when you search the resulting index. For
example, if you enter the custom property Document Name and choose the
string property from the Type menu, a user searching the index can then
search within the custom property by selecting Document Name from the Use
These Additional Criteria menu.

Note:

When you create custom fields in a Microsoft Office application in which
the Convert Document Information option is selected in the PDFMaker
application, the fields transfer over to any PDFs you create.

XMP Fields

Use this option to include custom XMP fields. The custom XMP fields are
indexed and appear in the additional criteria pop-up menus to be searchable
in the selected indexes.

Stop Words

Use to exclude specific words (500 maximum) from the index search results.
Type the word, click Add, and repeat as needed. Excluding words can make
the index 10% to 15% smaller. A stop word can contain up to 128 characters
and is case sensitive.

Note:

To prevent users from trying to search phrases that contain these words,
list words that arenât indexed in the Catalog Read Me file.

Structure Tags

Use this option to make specific leaf-element tag nodes searchable in
documents that have a tagged logical structure.

Note:

The Custom Properties, Stop Words, and Tags settings apply to the current
index only. To apply these settings globally to any index you create, you
can change the default settings for custom fields, stop words, and tags in
the Catalog panel of the Preferences dialog box.
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